Mindfulness A to Z

We hear about mindfulness a lot these days—it’s in the news, on the Internet, and even an app on your phone. There is no shortage of books, articles, and programs designed to reduce stress and help you to live in the present moment. Mindfulness can help you to become a better parent, a more productive employee, and even enhance your sex life.

Yet mindfulness has more to offer. A serious engagement with and commitment to mindfulness practices can help you to live an awakened life. In my book, Mindfulness A to Z: 108 Insights for Awakening Now, I’ve presented an alphabetized collection of mindfulness and Buddhist topics that can help you do just that. Many of the entries contain personal accounts of my attempts—some successful, some not—to be mindful. These stories are often humorous and always instructive. The brief entries are also practical with guidance for your mindfulness practice.

This gallery will define mindfulness and then explore seven key concepts with excerpts from Mindfulness A to Z.

What is Mindfulness?

There are many different ways of understanding mindfulness: as a personality trait, as a meditative state and practice from the Buddhist traditions, as a cognitive faculty, or a philosophical way of being-in-the-world. Much of what we hear about mindfulness comes from secularized versions of the ancient Buddhist practice. Mindfulness is a way of working with attention where it is focused on the present moment in a nonjudgmental way. It’s not about what we experience but how we experience things whether they are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Mindfulness can go deeper and wider than the present moment to help us to live each moment without trying to micromanage things that we have no control over and with that relinquishing of control to come to a place of profound peace that is our natural state. With this peace comes wisdom and the potential for awakening as the Buddha did himself 2500 years ago.

A is for Acceptance

Acceptance is almost a synonym for mindfulness. In Mindfulness A to Z, I put it this way:

When we are mindful, when we give our full attention to whatever is happening now, and can do so without the usual storytelling, pushing, pulling, and judgment, we arrive at acceptance. But it is rare that we give our full attention to what is happening now. We give partial attention; the rest of our attention is somewhere else. We are easily distracted.

Acceptance is coming to terms with reality as it is in this moment. First we must apprehend that reality with attention. Then, of course, we can take steps to change that reality in ways that are more consistent with our goals, values, and preferences. Acceptance, then is not a passive resignation but the wisdom of not fighting against what is so and saving that energy to act with more intention in the world.

B is for Buddha

Buddha was a person who lived in ancient India. But buddha is also a name given to the capacity each of us has for awakening. In the latter sense, both you and I are buddha, but this does not necessarily have to have anything to do with Buddhism.

Of course, if you’d like the Buddha’s teaching within a Buddhist religion—the choice is yours! And there are many wonderful options to choose from. The Buddhist religions emerged in the centuries after the historical Buddha and while based on his core teachings, have built upon and diverged from what he originally taught. The Buddha saw himself as a physician attempting to heal humanity and was not out to found a new religion. Nevertheless, religions emerged and the Buddha was sanctified and treated like a god. Some have forgotten that he was a human being—just like you and me trying to make sense of the world.

C is for Compassion

Compassion unfolds out of the simple act of paying attention to another. Compassion means “to suffer with,” and it can be distinguished from sympathy, which means “to feel with.” Sympathy, while not an ignoble impulse, implies distance between oneself and the suffering of others; compassion includes a desire to alleviate the suffering of the other. When we feel sympathy, we relate to the narrative of the suffering of others, as if we were spectators—somewhat involved, but safely removed from it. Compassion is similar to sympathy, but with openness afforded by lack of storytelling.

Compassion is fundamental to our humanity. When we can relinquish our self-preoccupation, compassion naturally emerges. When the story of “me” no longer prevails we can tap into our connectedness to everyone and everything so that we can feel and be present in ways that not only help others but feel good as well. When we no longer feel the need to protect an image of ourselves, openness prevails.

E is for Equanimity

Equanimity requires that we learn to attend to what is happening without reacting to it excessively—without developing craving or aversion for experiences. By finding a balance in between extreme reactions, we can learn to notice what is happening within and around us without losing control of how we respond to it. Rather than seeing challenging experiences as threats to our well-being, we can learn to approach them with a bit of equanimity, noting challenges and responding to them in a way that doesn’t compound the difficulty of the moment.

Equanimity is the ability to be there in the middle of things without pushing them away in fear or clinging to them with desire that is born out of an anxiety that fears losing what we have. Equanimity is like the calm eye in the middle of a hurricane. Equanimity is not avoidance, apathy, or indifference. Our minds can be even-keeled and engaged in ways that actually help us to get through whatever situation is at hand.

F is for FOMO

FOMO seems to define a lot of our contemporary anxieties. “Keeping up with the Joneses” used to mean having a preoccupation with materialism, but nowadays our sense of missing out seems to be tied as much to the quality of our life experiences as it is to material wealth. Fear of missing out ties our sense of well-being to our ability to collect new experiences.

FOMO is a new phenomenon that afflicts us in the Digital Age. We have the opportunity to participate with and observe others in unprecedented ways. The sheer abundance information through links, images, and stories can tweak our “comparaing” minds in ways that give rise to anxiety. Mindfulness can help us to notice how the mind latches on to what it imagines is “something better out there” and let it go. We can come to realize that whatever we are doing, so long as we give it our full attention, is the best experience. We no longer have to chase external conditions as a way to fill ourselves; we are complete already.

K is for Karma

The Buddha taught that karma hinges on intention—the thoughts, feelings, and aims that motivate our behavior. This way of thinking about karma pushes us to look behind actions to consider the mental states that lead us to do them. From one point of view, we can say that the idea of karma compels us to pay closer attention to the thoughts, feelings, and aims that drive what we do.

Karma is often misunderstood and yet is simply the rationale for taking personal responsibility for our thoughts and actions. If actions (including thoughts and intentions) have consequences, then it behooves us to be mindful because this will determine if our actions are beneficial or harmful. Given the choice, would we choose the beneficial? Of course we would, yet to make that happen we must be paying attention in every moment to every thought, intention, and action we engage. Every moment asks us to be present. Can we show up for them?

R is for Resilience

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity and a flexibility that lessens the impact of adversity. Resilience is persistence. Resilience is a key benefit of mindfulness. Being mindful will not prevent all distress from arising, but when it does arise, the skill of mindfulness will help us to recognize it, disengage from it, and return to baseline more rapidly.

In our culture, we are seeking lives of ease—enjoying every modern convenience, being free from illness and pain, and never having to face adversity. While this may be an image projected by television commercials, the reality of life is much different. Even when life goes well, it contains plenty of disappointment, loss, and stress. The goal is not to get rid of these things (an impossibility) but to engage them in a way that bends like a tree in the wind without breaking. Mindfulness can help us to do this by increasing our capacity to withstand the challenges of life without personalizing them.